The inquiry was conducted in Finnish, as that was found the only appropriate language to collect information from Finnish pupils and students. The questionnaire was divided in eight sections of which each was placed on a separate page. The first section concerned background information and the second eliminated non-players from the pool, directing them to a separate set of questions. Then, in the third section, gaming frequency and duration were investigated. This was followed by sections four and five, which introduced questions concerning the games in which informants had used English, the skills of language needed in and learned from gaming, and the experienced influence of gaming on language learning. The sixth section was about the possible distinctions between learning in the oral and written aspects of language and the possible benefits of game-derived skills of language to English studies or everyday life. The questions in the seventh section, discussing the believed benefit of digital gaming, were responded to by non-players only. Finally, section eight acted as a control point which tracked how many respondents actually finished the
questionnaire and provided the contact information of the researcher. Most questions were mandatory, but open questions were made optional in order to prevent
respondents quitting the query too early due to inability to express their thoughts and to reduce the number of irrelevant responses. The questions are presented in English below section by section. Below, optional questions, which did not require a response by the informant in order to carry on, are marked with ‘optional’. The original Finnish query with all instructions included is found in Appendix 1.
So, the questionnaire was begun by asking the respondents a few background details. This first page of the questionnaire included the following questions:
1) Do you speak English as your mother tongue?
Yes / No 2) Age.
13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20+
3) Gender.
Male / Female
4) Your latest English grade in secondary school on a scale of 4 to 10.
4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / If else, what?
The second page only introduced one question,
5) Do you play or have you ever played English video games on a computer, console, web browser or mobile device?
Yes / No
which was asked to separate those who have no experience of gaming and to direct them onto a different set of questions (19 and 20). Respectively, if respondents answered Yes to question 5, they carried on to question 6 but skipped questions 19 and 20 at the end.
On the third page the respondents were to provide more detailed information on their playing habits in terms of frequency and duration of playing.
6) If you play or have sometimes played computer games (other than educational ones), which of the following options describes your gaming the best?
a) I play once a month or less.
b) I play once a week or less.
c) I play many times a week.
d) I play every day or almost every day.
7) When you play computer games, for how long do you USUALLY play on that day?
a) Maximum half an hour.
b) Maximum an hour.
c) Maximum two hours.
d) Maximum four hours.
e) More than four hours.
Game brands, skills of language needed in gaming, and the helpfulness of playing for English learning were asked in the next section. Question 11 was a key question of the present study.
8) What games have you played in which you have used or from which you have learnt English?
(Open answers, optional.)
9) Has any game been, in your opinion, of specific benefit for learning English? If yes, please name it here.
(Open answers, optional.)
10) What skills of English language have you needed in games? Choose one or more.
a) Speaking.
b) Listening comprehension.
c) Writing.
d) Reading comprehension.
e) Oral conversation skills.
f) Written conversation skills.
g) If else, what?
The skills included in question 10 featured written and spoken comprehension, production and conversation skills, because both written and spoken receptive and productive skills are widely acknowledged to be the key areas of language
proficiency. Communication skills, both written and spoken, were also included, but the Finnish term keskustelutaidot that was used in the questionnaire translates best as conversation skills or discussion skills, so conversation skills will be used instead of communication skills in this paper.
11) Which of the following statements describes you the best?
a) Gaming has not helped to learn English at all.
b) Gaming has helped a little to learn English.
c) Gaming has helped significantly to learn English.
d) Most of my English proficiency is due to gaming.
e) I do not know if gaming has helped to learn English.
On the next page the respondents could specify which aspects or areas of language proficiency they had learned or where they had improved as a result of gaming. In question 12, the answer options were not chosen by any scientific method or theory, but
12) What kind of areas of language have you learnt or what have you improved in when gaming in English? (Multiple choice.)
a) Words.
b) Expressions, idioms, phrases.
c) Spelling.
d) Stylistic matters and registers, e.g. what kind of language it is conventional to use in different situations.
e) Dialect or slang.
f) Grammar.
g) Language history.
h) English culture-related issues.
i) Speaking.
j) Pronunciation.
k) Translation.
l) Conversation skills.
m) Reading.
n) If else, what?
13) Here you can specify what skills you have learnt or improved when gaming. (Open and optional.)
The following section discussed the benefits of gaming in school and studies and elsewhere. Question 14 was included mainly to compare whether the experienced benefits of gaming took place around either spoken or written language skills.
14) Which has gaming improved more, your spoken or written language skills?
a) Only spoken.
b) Mostly spoken.
c) Both spoken and written.
d) Mostly written.
e) Only written.
f) None.
15) Have the skills you have acquired through video games benefited you at school or in your studies?
a) Not at all.
b) Very little.
c) Somewhat.
d) A lot.
e) Substantially.
16) Do you feel that gaming ENHANCES your English STUDYING, in other words, it helps you study English more efficiently at school as well? If yes, how? (Open and optional.)
17) Have the skills you have acquired through video games benefited you elsewhere outside games and studies?
a) Not at all.
b) A little.
c) Somewhat.
d) Substantially.
18) If you feel that the skills you have acquired through video games have benefited you outside the games, please tell how you have utilized these skills. (Open and optional.) If the respondents had answered ‘No’ to question 5, they were directed to this final set of questions. Informants with experience in gaming did not answer the following questions at all.
19) To what extent do you believe English computer games benefit learning the language?
a) Not at all.
b) A little.
c) Somewhat.
d) Substantially.
20) If you believe that playing computer games facilitates learning English, please describe what kind of skills you believe the players learn or improve. (Open and optional.)
The last section including only Question 21 did not, as mentioned earlier, present actual questions but was used as a checkpoint to control if all respondents made it to the end. The frequencies and distribution of responses to each question will be examined, analyzed and discussed in Chapter 6.
6 STUDENTS’ PERSPECTIVE ON THE INFLUENCE OF GAMING ON THEIR LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY
This chapter will provide a quantitative overview of the results of the multiple choice questions. Following this, a more detailed quantitative analysis of the statistical results will be given. After the quantitative analysis, a qualitative insight into the data will be provided via analysis of the open-ended questions. This chapter will proceed question by question, discussing each briefly and also presenting the
respective figures. Chapter 6.8 will then examine the statistical relationships between certain factors, such as gender, latest English grade, playing frequency and duration, and experienced game-enhanced language learning. All results will be discussed in relation to the research questions in Chapter 7.
A total of 779 respondents began answering the query (appendix 1), and 585 of them (75.1 %) proceeded all the way to the checkout point (21), which indicated the
respondents that the inquiry was completed. Considering that the last mandatory
question for gamers was answered by 592 respondents, and the last mandatory question for non-gamers was answered by 63 respondents, a total of 655 respondents out of 779 can be seen to have reached their last ‘meaningful’ mandatory questions.
From this it can be calculated that 15.9 % of all respondents abandoned the query prematurely. Questions 5, 6, 8, 12, 14, 19 and 21 each began a new page in the survey, and a small decline in the number of respondents can be seen every time there was a transition to the next page. The respective numbers of respondents for each question are seen below in Figure 1, which is included here to illustrate the slight decline in the number of respondents and to remind the reader of the inequality of the number of responses to each question. Please note also that non-gamers were directed from question 5 to question 19.
Figure 1: Number of respondents per each question.